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LAN gone south

My son, rhsunderground, said I should ask here my question he couldn't answer. By the way, he didn't ask me the one about defragging; I would have given him answers much like yours.

Anyway, here at home, now that he's off to college, we have two computers that used to be in a wired LAN. After we switched from dial-up to cable internet access, the computers no longer are able to see each other, though I changed nothing but adding the cable modem. They both access the 'Net through the cable modem. One is running XP Pro, and the other is XP Home. Any ideas I can try?

I have a Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port Switch. The cable modem is connected directly to it, as is one computer; the other computer is connected to it via some long wires. (I'm not a techie, but they are the right kind for doing a wired network, CAT something or other, I believe. And just for the record, no, there aren't any cross-over wires involved.)

I've been through the networking wizard several times on both computers with no visible improvement. The computers are supposed to be connected to the router, aren't they?

I use Linksys too, though wireless. Okay, that's good, best type of internet connection, in my opinion. So, now, the computers won't recognize each other?

(1) In a browser, go to http://192.168.1.1 That goes to the router, no? Can all the computers access the router?

(2) Do all the computers have internet access? Are they able to connect to the internet? If they are, than that probably means that there's some issue going on between the two computers, and that the router is fine.

Yes, clicking on that link opened Netscape (my browser of choice) and asked for a password for the router. I haven't set one up, so I didn't put one in.

Both computers do access teh Internet quite regularly and often at the same time. That's one of the reasons we went with cable and a LAN. I don't think the problem is in the router, but then again I don't know a whole lot about these things.

Have you run any setup software that came with your cable modem? Unlike dial-up, cable Internet, in my experience, doesn't work without running the setup CD that comes with it. Dial-up runs a different way then cable. So that may be an issue. Not sure if that will help but it's worth a shot. I had a similar problem when I switched to cable about a year ago and I found myself banging my head against the wall once I found out that it was simply because I didn't run the setup. With the two companies I have gotten cable from before they both came with setup software which configured the Internet connection and my LAN at the same time. With my latest cable connection it has an option to setup a "main" computer and then you can take the disk to any other computers and run the same program but there is an option to set them up as secondary computers on the LAN. If you have a good provider then you shouldn't need to be an expert. It should be pretty much automatic with the CD.

I do have a CD, and I did run it when I first got cable. That was a few days before I got the new router, so maybe if I run it again... Unfortunately, I'm really loaded down with work right now and won't be able to get to much else for a few days.

I suppose I could try the Windows network wizard again, too. 333rd time is a charm?